The invention relates generally to a display system and, more particularly, to a shelf display system of modular construction.
In modern point of sales displays, merchants desire the ability to display their merchandise in an attractive and economical manner. The manufacturers of the goods sold by merchants often provide merchants with temporary display fixtures for the display of their particular merchandise. Such temporary displays must be space efficient, inexpensive, and easy to use.
Display systems employing shelves suspended from four corner posts have been known. While effective for use in storing goods and providing stability, such four corner post systems are deficient from the stand point of the marketer, in that the presence of four corner posts impedes customer access to the product.
Shelf units have been built in which the shelves are suspended from a pair of laterally spaced side posts instead of four corner posts, thereby providing consumers with greater access to the product. U.S. Pat. No. 3,081,718 to Shoffner shows one common manner of eliminating corner posts by suspending shelves in cantilever fashion from a central supporting portion. U.S. Pat. No. 3,921,539 to Bergen shows shelves supported at their sides by a pair of standards 13. While these and other shelving systems can be used to display products, they typically either lack modularity (i.e., the ability to quickly alter the size of the display), are expensive to manufacture, or require an excessive amount of time and skill to erect. There remains a need for an economical display system utilizing only two vertical support posts that offers the merchant a high degree of versatility and marketing efficacy In addition to providing an attractive means of displaying a product, it is also desirable that such a display system can be easily assembled with a minimum amount of labor. Ideally, assembly should be so mechanically simple that the display can be assembled by hand without tools.